A distribution center (e.g., a warehouse, a fulfillment center, a cross-dock facility, a bulk break center, an unstructured or structured storage area, and/or a package handling center) may be a physical space in which inventory (e.g., products) is temporarily stored and/or handled for downstream delivery to retailers or consumers. The distribution center may allow a single location to stock a number of products. Distribution centers may be located far from urban locations to secure lower costs or closer to where customers are located to facilitate same day and/or next day delivery (e.g., for e-commerce transactions), and may be in urban locations where costs of real estate per square foot is expensive. For this reason, the distribution center may be stacked high in a small space, with rows reaching ten (10) meters or more. Activities within manufacturing facilities may cover—picking of parts for assembly from a vertically stacked storage area with many high rows of shelving. In addition, some organizations may operate manufacturing and/or direct-to-consumer distribution in a single facility or interconnected facility to share investments (e.g., in space, equipment, labor resources, and/or inventory as applicable).
The distribution center may have a series of rows having stacked shelving. Items may be stored on these shelves. A warehouse management system (e.g., WMS system) may be used to identify and track inventory in the distribution center. A human lift may be required to pick items stored in a higher row of the shelf based on information from the warehouse management system. This may require repositioning of warehouse vehicles. In addition, a trained human operator may need to enter a lift basket and manually perform tasks such as picking items from higher shelves. This may result in significant labor expenses in training and skilled labor. Further, professional hazard insurances for workplace injury and occupational risks may be high as these tasks may be dangerous and accident prone. Therefore, the distribution center may operate inefficiently and may be expensive and/or hazardous to operate.